Solving Magento 404s with Joomla! Dynamic404
Saturday, 27 November 2010One of the cool things of MageBridge is that it allows you to solve Magento problems using Joomla! logic. Already a long time ago we released a Joomla! component Dynamic404 that allows you to resolve 404 Not Found pages. Instead of showing visitors an ugly 404 page, Dynamic404 tries to find the match within Joomla! content and even allows you to redirect the visitor automatically to the best match. Let's reuse that for Magento!
MageBridge and 404 pages
When a 404 error occurs in Magento - perhaps because the URL Key of a Magento product changed, or because you made a typo - Magento loads a separate page but just as Joomla!, it doesn't help the visitor much. Now, MageBridge has the ability to turn a Magento 404 into a Joomla! 404 - making it possible to use Joomla! extensions to improve the 404 page.
Dynamic404 and plugins
So, there's the possibility to reroute every Magento 404 through the bridge to become a Joomla! 404, and then use a Joomla! extension like AceSEF or Dynamic404 to handle that error. That's already cool. But instead of just improving the 404 page itself, Dynamic404 tries to remove the actual need for a 404 by searching for a possible match in Joomla! content.
If a good match is found, Dynamic404 turns the HTTP Status Code 404 into 301 and redirects to the appropriate page. Now, Dynamic404 can be extended using Joomla! plugins. These plugins allow Dynamic404 to search for specific types of content. For instance, K2 content can be looked up to find possible redirect-matches.
So there it is: We have also created a Dynamic404 specifically for MageBridge. So when a 404 occurs in Magento, this 404 is transferred to Joomla! and then to Dynamic404, which then searches the Magento product-database for possible matches. Forget about ugly 404 pages: With the Dynamic404 / MageBridge combo you can actually remove any URL and easily redirect your visitors to the new URLs instead.